American Ballet Theatre Giselle ★★★★✰ New York, Metropolitan Opera House 26,27 May 2017 www.abt.org Giselle Fever Like Swan Lake, Giselle is a centerpiece of the ballet repertoire; American Ballet Theatre performs it almost every spring season, for good reason. The company’s production is handsome and a bit shopworn, with sets by Gianni Quaranta that were originally designed for the 1987 film...
Author - Marina Harss
★★★★✰ Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet for ABT, Whipped Cream, is like a Viennese confection: so layered and airy that it takes a moment to fully take in the flavor of its many ingredients.
★★★★✰ Don Q is pure entertainment, the kind of extroverted spectacle that the ballet is so very good at.
★★★✰✰ With his latest, The Decalogue, which opened on May 12, Justin Peck seems to have turned a new page...
★★★✰✰ Justin Peck is the it-boy at New York City Ballet, and it’s not hard to see why. At only 29, he has racked up an impressive number of ballets...
★★★✰✰ It’s a shame that the company didn’t choose to revive some Wheeldon rarities from its back catalogue...
★★★★✰ I still remember my feelings during the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s Russian Seasons at NYCB in 2006. There was a shock of recognition: this was the thing I had been looking for...
★★★✰✰ Mohiniyattam is known as the “dance of the enchantress” – it is extremely feminine and flowing, and devoid of the rhythmic attack and angularity that makes some of the other dances so exciting...
★★★★✰ Scottish Ballet came ready to impress, and impress it did.
★★★★✰ For its second visit to the Joyce (the first was in 2015) Compagnie CNDC brought an excellent and well-balanced program. Two works from the sixties, followed one from the eighties...
★★★✰✰ Two interesting impulses have been evident in the modern and post-modern dance scene in New York of late....
(Works danced: Diagonal, Trio A With Flags, Chair-Pillow, Excerpt from Goldberg Variations, The Courtesan and the Crone, Untitled Touch)
★★★★★ The varied program included three dance works and one musical interlude. Each section was excellent...
★★★✰✰ Dreaming of Lions ...is an ambitious work, an hour-long, semi-abstract meditation on Ernest Hemingway’s tale of maritime endurance, The Old Man and the Sea.
★★★★✰ The Fairy's Kiss (Ratmansky premiere): The final image is poetic, grand, inspiring. It takes one’s breath away.
★★★✰✰ This winter, New York is getting to see more Merce Cunningham than it has in years, thanks to visits from various European companies. It is a sad fact that Europe has always been more supportive of Cunningham than the choreographer’s own country.
★★★✰✰ More than anything, Peck's "The Times are Racing" reminded me of the movie Rebel Without a Cause. These kids are uneasy, but what is the object of their unease?
★★★✰✰ Alongside George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, one could argue that the third most important voice at New York City Ballet in the twentieth century was that of Igor Stravinsky.
★★★★✰ Sara Mearns, who made her name as Swan Queen at the age of nineteen, is still the most thrilling Odette around.
Marina Harss with her personal selection of New York dance memories this last year...
★★★★✰ There is no limit to how often one can see Ailey’s 1960 masterpiece Revelations. The elation is always the same.